1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of determining or evaluating the popularity or commercial successfulness of products or articles, and in particular, the present invention relates to a product evaluation system which is able to evaluate and determine how successful a particular category, class or style of an article, such as jewelry, is performing in the marketplace for a particular selling location or geographic area.
2. Background of the Related Art
In today's competitive marketplace, there is a trend for companies to stress or emphasize their ability to meet the customer's needs or requests within a short period of time. The more preferable situation, however, is not to fulfill a customer's request within a short period of time, but rather, it is preferred to anticipate the customer's needs in the future and have readily available the particular desired goods so that the customer does not have to wait any period of time whatsoever before purchasing the goods. By providing the ability to immediately fulfill or satisfy the customer's request or order, suppliers or distributors and retailers or dealers are able to provide the customer with the ability to purchase products on an impulsive basis.
Most businesses recognize the clear advantages of providing customers the ability to purchase products on an impulsive basis. Impulsive shopping is particularly important in the fashion industry, such as fashion jewelry, where trendy styles of jewelry may have only a relatively short life cycle. Thus, in the fashion industry in particular, retailers that are unable to sell to customers due to lack of inventory on hand often lose their potential sales and are unable to recapture these lost sales at a later time due to the impulsive nature of customers in the fashion market arena.
Unfortunately, in today's environment, distributors and dealers are so occupied and overwhelmed in their day to day activities, it is difficult to expend or invest the time and resources in determining or evaluating the successes and failures of particular categories and classes of fashions or particular styles of fashions in a timely manner. This is especially true for distributors and dealers that are principally concerned with replenishing or restocking inventory in a frequent manner, such as on a weekly basis. Thus, a substantial part of a supplier's or retailer's activity is expended to insure that an adequate supply of inventory is available for sale to the customer.
As indicated above, due to the time constraints on the distributor and dealer and due to the dynamic sales activities particularly related to the fashion industry, distributors and dealers are forced to guess or crudely estimate which types of fashion articles will be stocked or inventoried, as well as the specific quantity for each of the inventoried fashion articles. As a result, distributors often supply and dealers often order specific fashion articles which are unlikely to be purchased in the future. This causes the dealer to overstock a particular fashion article. Depending upon the relationship between the dealer and the distributor, the dealer may then return the overstocked items to the distributor who must then attempt to resell these overstock fashion articles to another dealer or the dealer will absorb the loss of overstocking. Thus, the overall profitability of both the distributor and the dealer may thereby be significantly reduced.
In addition, since both the distributor and the dealer are unable to accurately or precisely determine or evaluate the performance, i.e., the success, of different categories of fashion articles as well as different styles of fashion articles, at times, the distributor and dealer are unable to predict or identify a particular fashion article which is performing or selling exceptionally well. In these instances, the dealer becomes understocked with this particular fashion item and is unable to effectuate as many sales since the demand of the fashion article far exceeds the supply on hand at the dealer location. If the distributor or dealer was able to determine in advance that a particular fashion article was performing exceptionally well, the distributor would be able to manufacture or obtain additional amounts of the fashion article for resale to the customer. Thus, in the situation where the dealer or distributor is unable to identify a particular commercially successful fashion article, both the dealer and distributor are prevented from effectuating increased amounts of sales, again resulting in reduced profitability to both the dealer and distributor.
As indicated above, due to the dynamic aspects of retail sales, particularly with respect to fashion articles, distributors and dealers are overwhelmed in their daily activities and have not seriously considered and are unable to access the sales performance of particular articles in an efficient manner as well as on a timely basis, such as every week. That is, since the dealers and distributors are typically involved in the management of excessive information relating to inventory numbers, pricing, distributing and selling the fashion articles, they have not considered and are unable to accurately assess in detail which fashion articles are performing well to determine, for example, that additional stock above the normal inventory levels should be maintained by the dealer. Further, dealers and distributors have not seriously considered and are unable to accurately determine which fashion articles are not performing well for which no additional stock should be inventoried by the dealer, and for which the particular fashion article should be discontinued or phased out.
Much of the problems associated with the above inabilities of dealers and distributors to accurately assess the performance of different fashion articles relate in large part to the massive amounts of data to be compiled and organized in an efficient and timely manner, preferably on a week-to-week basis. An additional problem confronting dealers and distributors particularly in the fashion industry is associated with differentiating between fashion articles which may be selling at a higher rate or sale price than other fashion articles, but having a lower profitability margin. In this situation, even though a particular fashion article is selling well with respect to the number of sales, this particular fashion may not be preferred since it has a lower profitability margin than other fashion articles. Presently, however, dealers and distributors have been unable to recognize this particular problem and solve it since they have been so occupied in the crude process of restocking of inventory.
A further previously unrecognized problem which therefore has been ignored by dealers and distributors relates to determining the best performing fashion article styles to predict future performance of specific styles or categories of fashion articles likely to be successful in the future. Additionally, it is impossible to compare different styles to each other to determine which categories or styles of fashion articles may be preferred by customers. Further, it has been impossible to relate different fashion articles together, individually or in groups to determine whether any relationship exists between the different fashion articles which might further indicate clarify why particular categories or styles of fashion articles have been successful. This relationship might also indicate which combinations of fashion articles might be sold together to further capitalize on current successful fashion articles by combining successful fashion articles with respect to category and style in an effective marketing program.
It may also be possible that based on the relationship between different successfully performing fashion articles, that newer fashion article designs combining the different popular features of the different fashion articles performing successfully may be developed. It has been impractical in the past to determine which specific styles or designs of fashion articles are performing successfully to determine which styles are particularly valuable and which require intellectual property protection, such as for instance, copyright or design patent protection.
Accordingly, it is desirable to efficiently organize and compile data relating to the performance of different fashion articles in a timely manner to permit dealers and distributors to determine the popularity or success of a particular fashion article with respect to various decision criteria such as the performance of a particular selling location, class, style or category of fashion article. It is further desirable to determine the success or lack thereof of a particular fashion article based upon the quantity of articles sold in comparison to the profitability margin for a particular article. It is also desirable to provide a system for determining which styles of fashion articles are successful in order to predict future performance of specific styles, categories or classes of fashion articles which are likely to be successful in the future. It is also desirable to compare different styles of fashion articles to determine customer preference. It is further desired to be able to determine whether particular relationships exist between successful fashion articles to extrapolate which combinations of fashion articles might be sold together.
It is also desirable to predict new fashion article designs which are likely to be successful based upon existing successful fashion articles. It is also desirable to determine which styles of different fashion articles may be particularly valuable, and therefore, requiring intellectual property protection.